Oklahoma Christian Commemorates Twin Tragedies
OKLAHOMA CITY — Every tree has a story, said Ron Vega.
But two trees that stand side by side on the campus of Oklahoma Christian University carry in their branches stories of hope after unimaginable twin tragedies.
Vega, a New Yorker who worked in recovery efforts after 9/11 and later assisted in the design and construction of the 9/11 memorial, traveled to Oklahoma to break ground on a Survivor Tree Memorial Plaza on Oklahoma Christian’s campus.
Survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing and university officials also donned hard hats, picked up shovels and dug into the Sooner State’s red dirt for the occasion.
Oklahoma Christian, which is associated with Churches of Christ, is the only site outside of New York City to have survivor trees from both tragedies, university officials said.
Just west of the university’s library stands a tall American Elm — an offspring of a tree that remained standing after the Oklahoma City bombing. The April 19, 1995, attack, an act of domestic terrorism that claimed 168 lives, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, about 12 miles south of Oklahoma Christian’s campus. The Survivor Tree remains standing at the site of the explosion, now the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.
“We were conscious of what happened then,” said Vega, an architect for the City of New York. Just two years earlier, terrorists from Pakistan and the Middle East detonated a truck bomb similar to the one used in the Oklahoma attack in a parking lot beneath the World Trade Center, killing six people.
Nonetheless, New Yorkers didn’t fully understand the pain experienced by the people of Oklahoma City, Vega said.
And then the unthinkable happened — again.
On Sept. 1, 2001, terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden flew two hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, destroying both towers and killing 2,977 people.
“When terrorism came visiting us, we needed you,” Vega said to Oklahomans during the groundbreaking service. “How do we go on after this? You were our strength.”
As Vega and his fellow workers performed the herculean task of recovering bodies from the ruins in New York, they saw a tree that they assumed also had perished in the blast. But about a month after the attack, they noticed new growth.
“This tree doesn’t want to give up,” said Vega, who made it his personal mission to save the tree.
City workers moved the tree, a Callery Pear, to an arboretum overseen by the parks department. Caring for the tree — which nearly toppled during a storm — and moving it to what would become the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum involved years of red tape and bureaucracy, Vega said. But he was tenacious and persistent in his advocacy for the tree.
Finally, as the tree recovered and thrived, city workers took 200 cuttings from its branches. Only 12 survived. One was given to Vega.
After 9/11, volunteers from Oklahoma Christian including then-library director Brad Robison formed partnerships with New Yorkers to assist in relief, recovery and support. Robison contacted Vega to see if it would be possible for the university to get one of the cuttings from New York’s survivor tree.
It wouldn’t, Vega told Robison, but they could have his.
The Callery Pear from New York now stands just to the east of the Oklahoma City Survivor Tree’s offspring. It’s a tad shorter than its sister tree, but flourishing nonetheless.
“This baby behind me is New York,” Vega said as he stood in front of the pear tree at the groundbreaking. “It’s also Oklahoma.”
Susan Walton, a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing, also spoke at the groundbreaking. She was making a deposit at the Federal Employees Credit Union on the third floor of the Murrah building when the explosion happened at 9:02 a.m. — a time etched into the architecture of the Oklahoma City memorial.
She had seen “that small, scraggly tree” in the parking lot many times, she said. She remains amazed that it survived and has thrived in the 29 years since the attack.
As the anniversary of the bombing approaches, “it’s good to have somebody that you can lean on, at this time of year, that understands what you’re going through,” Walton said. “People tell us that, if we forget, that things could happen again. This is why we want to keep this top of mind for people.”
The Survivor Tree Memorial Plaza, slated for completion in September, will serve as “a place of remembrance to honor those who lost their lives and the solidarity between the two cities affected by these tragedies,” Oklahoma Christian officials said in a news release.
In addition to survivors and first responders from the two tragedies, one attendee at the groundbreaking was a survivor of the 2013 bomb attack at the Boston Marathon. That attack killed three people and injured hundreds more.
Christine Meredith, Oklahoma Christian’s chief advancement officer, thanked the survivor for coming, adding that she was sorry for the circumstances that united him with the other attendees.
His response: “That’s how the healing happens.”
This piece is republished from The Christian Chronicle with permission.
Erik Tryggestad is president and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. He has filed stories for the Chronicle from more than 65 nations.